


What These Hands Can Hold

by Callioope



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: (very briefly) - Freeform, Character Study, Drabble, F/M, Kid Fic, i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-13 21:44:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14121462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callioope/pseuds/Callioope
Summary: What good are hands such as these, made for war?





	What These Hands Can Hold

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on tumblr about a month ago, and I'm just adding it here so all my rebelcaptain fics are in one place.

Cassian grips his rifle: left hand bracing the barrel, right index gracing the trigger. The metal is smooth and slick beneath his fingers, and with a single twitch, muscle memory, the job is done. His hands are dry and drenched in blood.

Cassian’s hands know the rumble of the control stick and intricacies of Kay’s circuitry; they are calloused and rough and sometimes don’t seem to feel everything they should, hot or cold, soft or rough, not as finely as the manicured Imperial hands that he shakes undercover. His knuckles may be less familiar with the crush of a broken nose beneath them, but it’s not a foreign feeling; and there was only one time — one time — when he didn’t have his gun — when his hands had to do the work — when he was too old to be scrubbing wetness away from his eyes.

His fingers are nimble on the keys of his datapad, as his hands reveal Imperial secrets, betray his secret (the secret of how far he’ll go; and the truth is he doesn’t know, but his hands document his path). His hands are steady when he shoots; his hands tremble when he’s done. His hands gesture in front of him. His hands have gloves (the gloves are a lie). His hands shoot — one — two — three. His hands flex and his hands grip the metal as he climbs and leaves a rebel an agent his agent behind. His hands his hands his hands —

His hands clench around her arm as he guides her through the base. He reaches out an open palm (give it to me), but trust goes both ways. He hovers behind her on Jedha, fingers ghosting at her lower back, guiding. He doesn’t know what he’s reaching for (he does). Wrists tied behind his back, he stumbles across the Jedhan desert, and since he can’t reach for her here, since he can’t even see her, he listens, he strains his ears listening and hears nothing, knows nothing. And then his hands clutch cold metal bars, and she is gone, and he can’t categorize this feeling because he’s never been here before (felt this before). He carries his prison wherever he goes (he carries a great many things), but what weighs the heaviest is the emptiness.

The ground rumbles (it’s not him shaking). His pick turns — clicks — and he thinks _Jyn_. And rocks fall around him and everything falls into place. (Almost.) His feet know better what he’s reaching for and he stumbles his way to her.

Deftly he: steers them through clouds and rubble as the ground rolls upward, types in coordinates, shifts into hyperspace. For all his work in getting away, he can’t land; traitorous hands navigate into a crash and it’s only foreshadowing the real disaster that’s been threatening since a separatist first placed a heavy, jagged rock in six-year-old fingers.

(It is a disaster of conscience.

He does not kill Galen Erso.)

Now his hands are practiced, leading her away from trouble (the Jedhan marketplace, the crumbling catacombs, and now a broken, burning platform, littered with bodies and debris, slick with rain and oil and blood). But his hands, maybe, work faster than his heart, and when he tosses wet gloves down, hears them slapping against the metal floor — everything has betrayed him today. Hands that won’t shoot, what good are they for then? If they can’t do their job?

It’s not until he hears her speak and predicts the response that he finds his own answer. That he knows how to put these hands to use.

There are surfaces he knows: hard, cold, rough. These are consoles and blasters, ships and circuits. These are fast decisions that end in death.

There are textures more like dreams: soft, warm, smooth. These are fingers laced together. These are questions and hopes.

He watches her, eyes closed, fingers clutching a crystal worn smooth from years of handling. He has nothing and grips the bar overhead and when their eyes meet — when their smiles match — sometimes two souls can reach, can meet, without ever touching.

(And sometimes a brush of fingertips can spread warmth faster than the thickest coat.)

He pulls gray, stiff sleeves down over his wrists. No wrinkles.

He holds up the officers hand to the fingerprint display (an old move made new, suddenly, by the presence of another, by hands in the way, fluttering and in sync).

He climbs. (Fingers cramping.)

He shoots. (Fingers steady.)

And everything changes.

Because she is in his arms. (His arms are full.) She carries him. (He feels light even though he knows he weighs her down.) She entwines her fingers in his. (Real. Not a dream.)

Her fingers are still there when he wakes, not on a beach but in a bed, in a medbay, on Yavin 4.

She guides him through therapy, hand steady on his arm as he limps, as he walks.

He is twenty-six and learning the world again. Small discoveries thrill him: her hands are just callused as his, but they are no less desired for it; her hair slips through his fingers like silk, like water; her skin pricks in goosebumps as he traces his fingertips over it. His hands find new exercises, and when she smiles, gasps, sighs, he knows what good his hands can do.

When she falls, his hands are there to pull her up. When she breaks, his hands are there to share her pain. When she shakes awake, yelling, crying, his hands are there to brush hair out of her face, to clear the path for the kiss destined to her forehead.

With these hands, he stitches cuts, he applies salve, he sets broken bones. With these hands, he cooks for two, holds the knife steady, wields it in a rhythm as vegetable juice smears over fingertips (if he bakes, she’ll lick his fingertips).

His hands seek out scarves soft like clouds and wrap them carefully over her shoulders.

His hands offer sharpened knives and new blasters that won’t burn and truncheons that won’t slip in her grip (and he collects, in his mind, smiles categorized by joy, delight, eager greed — every look she wears, every subtle difference in the precise angle of her lips or the crinkles at the edges of her eyes).

He pulled her out of trouble on Jedha and Eadu, but it is Jyn who pulls him through the war, who takes his hand and leads him through the crumbling recesses of his mind and the downpours of his heart. He told her rebellions on are built on hope, and she took it, and she plows forward with it, cradling it, reaching back to him with a smile, encouraging him with a firm grip. He follows he follows he follows.

The Death Star explodes in the sky overhead and she takes his hand. Her fingers slip between his. She squeezes. He feels her far away and just stares and watches, until she brushes the scruff on his jaw.

Endor is a memory of his hands holding either side of her head, of locking eyes with her, of reading the final celebratory truth there and only in that moment knowing for sure what waits in the future is what he holds in his hands.

The rest, that’s unknowable; only her, and standing beneath towering trees it seems like enough.

But he’s never looked up at the future before, only at its shadow; he’s never contemplated branches and leaves and sunlight.

On Jakku, sand shifts before him, great dunes rippling in the wind, and when he reaches down a handful of orange sifts through his fingers. Jyn holds a future and he holds — nothing.

(Jyn looks out before them and sees patterns, sees a path, sees a place he cannot imagine or has forgotten. Jyn will put down her truncheons, her knives, her blasters. Jyn will pick up tools: she will build, mend, create.)

She sees him shifting, with nothing to grasp. She takes his hand.

When he falls, deep, in an abyss of — regret, loss, self-hatred — her hands are there to offer a way out and up. When he breaks, curls in on himself, her hands wrap around him, her hands rub circles in his back, her hands unlock his shoulders, his grip, his prison he still can’t break free from. When he shakes awake, yelling, crying, her hands push aside his hair and kiss his forehead.

(She points, she guides, she nudges him towards a professional. She won’t drag him there, but her hand holding his reminds him why he goes.)

On Yavin 4: ex-soldiers, civilians, people build homes, in the rubble of the old temple base. They chop down twisting vines and gnarled trees, part of an past era, and houses, streets, villages rise up.

Cassian can’t clear away what he’s done, but he navigates his way through it, finds a path, overgrown, dark, winding, but a path that leads to —

On Yavin 4: Jyn catches five-year-old Poe and tickles him; Jyn carefully takes a bundled Ben from Leia’s arms and finds Cassian’s eyes across the room (sometimes two souls can reach, can meet, without touching).

Only if you’re sure, she insists, and nothing has ever felt as sure as her hand in his.

(The truth is — maybe — he’s not sure except for one thing.

He loves he loves he loves.)

And he’s given her, offered her, many things over the years. And all he ever wants, all he’s really been reaching for, is that smile she sends his way. So this is what he gives, for her happiness; for their happiness.

Her skin is taught and smooth beneath his palm; and her belly shakes as it — the baby — their child kicks him (reaching out for him).

But it’s not until she comes, not until Jyn holds her in her arms, not until their daughter, with tiny hands, seizes his finger.

It’s not until Jyn gently passes her to him and his arms cradle this person, fragile and light and so dependent, that he realizes what it is.

What these hands can hold.

And so they name her: Esper. Esperanza.

Hope.


End file.
